Please can we change the vampire contesting rule?

The recent talk about the Scarce keyword and debate about changing it made me think about the VTES rule that I (and others I play with) think needs changing the most, vampire contesting. The discussion of the Scarce rule led to the suggestion to only require a player to pay the scarce penalty of 3 pool for each other vampire of that scarce clan that they control. Most people (if not all) people (including Vincent, the rules coordinator) agreed that a player should not be penalized for the random occurrence of another player using a vampire from the same scarce clan. And yet the vampire contesting rule negatively impacts players for the same reason (the random occurrence of another player using a similar vampire, the same vampire in this case), but to a much greater penalty.

I think everyone would agree that the cost of contesting vampires is extremely costly and almost always leads to one or both of the players contesting to be ousted quickly. This is of course due to the fact that contesting a vampire means spending pool and transfers to bring out the vampire which then immediately goes out of play (unable to help you in any way other than keeping the other copy of the contested vampire out of play), and then an additional 1 pool per unlock phase to contest, and then, if you yield, losing that vampire and all the pool you put on it for the rest of your soon to be ended game. Even the player that won the contest is at a great disadvantage since they wasted so much time (and additional pool to pay to contest) just getting their vampire out, while likely taking a good chunk of damage from their predator during the contest.

Rather than getting into any debate about whether crypt contesting should be eliminated (which I would be fine with), I am just suggesting a simple solution that would not be too drastic of a change yet would actually give players that contest vampires a chance to win without being at such a great disadvantage from the get go: Just add a few sentences to the rulebook to basically say: "When a player yields a contested crypt card, all blood on that card is returned to the controlling player's pool."

Here is the relevant wording from the rulebook:

The cost to contest a card is one pool, which you pay during each of your unlock phases. Instead of paying the cost to contest the card, you may choose to yield the card. A yielded card is burned. Any cards or counters stacked on the yielded card are also burned.

I suggest changing it to this:

The cost to contest a card is one pool, which you pay during each of your unlock phases. Instead of paying the cost to contest the card, you may choose to yield the card. A yielded card is burned. If the yielded card is a library card, then any cards or counters stacked on the yielded card are also burned.If the yielded card was a crypt card, then any cards or counters stacked on the yielded card that are not blood counters are also burned. Any blood counters on the yielded crypt card are returned to that card controller's pool.

What do you all think of this? It would still keep the theme of unique vampires intact, would still be a penalty for contesting, just not so horrible of a penalty. I really hope that the Black Chantry boys seriously consider this rule change, or at least some similar version.

For thematic feel, I like the idea that contested crypt cards have their text boxes blanked, which would include such things as titles. Would retain disciplines, cards on them, clan, sect, counters, and continue to be usable. Essentially, a contested vampire becomes a shadow of itself. Yes, that means losing infernal, scarce, etc. because trying to decide what is kept and what isn't led to Seeds of Corruption getting banned.

By looking at the title alone I was ready to storm in with "NONONONONONONO!!", but:

the suggestion actually makes all kinds of sense.

Of course I won't agree with it at face value, as I think contesting vampires for variety and balance is really important, but losing outright to a random contest is rough. With your suggestion players are 'merely' set back a 1-3 turns. In a tournament environment that lapse might kill you. As is, contesting a 11-cap will most likely kill you.

It might make for super weird situations where you Minion Tap a vampire, refill it, someone contests it, and you miraculously got yourself a Golconda effect.

The brutality of contesting was always somewhat alluring to me though, I'll have to admit.

"Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!"
-Nalia De-Arnise

There was a suggestion, some years back, that I quite liked, though I can't lay my hands on a copy of it right now - it felt quite satisfying, still retaining the flavour of contesting, while not being horrificially debilitating for the deck.

From memory, it was roughly along the lines of:

- When a unique minion is contested, only one copy of it can be in play at any one time. The other copies are flipped out of play.

- During a Methuselah's untap phase, they can pay the one pool to flip their copy back into play. When they do so, any copy that is currently in play is flipped out of play.

- Players still cannot self-contest minions.

Each player therefore gets their own copy, which works as they were planning it would work.

The main loser (in that they don't benefit much) in this situation would be decks that want the vampire out for blocking/reacting purposes that would happen after the other Methuselah flips their copy back out. e.g. you want to use Anneke to block stuff, but some other Methuselah - who might even be your preys - flips theirs back out. But maybe everyone could have in the back of their minds as a semi-reasonable thing to do: "Okay, so if I really need to make good use of this vampire on my turn because blocking/bouncing is hard, what do I do with it?" Which while still a pain, is probably a lot less bad than currently

As vampire contestation (specifically big vampire contestation--when Old
Netdecker is contested, it is hardly a problem. When the IC member your
deck is relying on to go, or whatever, is contested, your game is
generally over before it even starts) is soooo incredibly random (how
many vampires are in the game now?), it seems like it might be prudent
to make it less completely devastating when it happens. What we came up
with was that maybe the game would work better for all involved if when
a vampire was contested, instead of both players losing control of that
vampire, you got to alternate control of him instead. Something like:

"If two (or more) copies of a unique minion are in play, both are
flipped over and considered out of play. During each player's untap
phase, they must pay a pool to flip over their copy of the minion into
play (and flip over their opponent's copy out of play) and may use the
vampire as normal until their opponent does the same on their untap
phase. They may choose to not pay a pool and burn their copy of the
minion immediately."

My memory has made it more voluntary than Peter's original did - he still had it yield immediately if you chose not to pay. Although I think I probably prefer it being something where your copy could sit in the background for ages until you do want it, perhaps. But that's the original idea anyhow.